Question

How to assign children's information to the parents?

Hello,

I am trying to calculate the amount EITC claimed by each household from 1990-1999 in STATA. EITC is based on taxfiler's income, number of qualifying children (less than 19 years of age) and marital status. I have created a vriable showing which children are qualifying. Now I want to tie this infomration to the houehold head because they are the ones who will claim the children and receive the EITC. How do I link the information, whether a child is qualifying to their parent i.e. how do I create a variable showing the number of qualifying children the head of houeshold has. I have a serial and cpsid variable that identifies the household but when I sort it, it mixes things up. I am using monthly basic sample for cps.

I have tried the command: collapse (count) qual_child, by (cpsid)

and got nowhere. I think there is an issue with the household identifier that I am not seeing.

Staff Answer

The most straightforward way to do this is to make the IPUMS extract system do the work for you. Before finalizing your data extract, use the "Attach Characteristics" tool. This feature can attach a characteristic of a person's mother, father, spouse, or household head as a new variable on the person's record. There is likely a way to do this in STATA, but it will require a bit of coding. So, I'd recommend using the Attach Characteristics feature of the IPUMS data extract system.

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